"Yesterday you were good enough to call at my place, sir-"The Sahib knitted his brows, and, lifting just one eye from his paper, said: "I called at your place! Babu, what nonsense are you talking?""Beg your pardon, sir," faltered out Nabendu. There has been a mistake--some confusion," and wet with perspiration, he tumbled out of the room somehow. And that night, as he lay tossing on his bed, a distant dream-like voice came into his ear with a recurring persistency: "Babu, you are a howling idiot."On his way home, Nabendu came to the conclusion that the Magistrate denied having called, simply because he was highly offended.
So he explained to Labanya that he had been out purchasing rose-water.
No sooner had he uttered the words than half-a-dozen chuprassis wearing the Collectorate badge made their appearance, and after salaaming Nabendu, stood there grinning.
"Have they come to arrest you because you subscribed to the Congress fund?" whispered Labanya with a smile.
The six peons displayed a dozen rows of teeth and said: Bakshish--Babu-Sahib."
>From a side room Nilratan came out, and said in an irritated manner:
"Bakshish? What for?"
The peons, grinning as before, answered: "The Babu-Sahib went to see the Magistrate--so we have come for bakshish""I didn't know," laughed out Labanya, "that the Magistrate was selling rose-water nowadays. Coolness wasn't the special feature of his trade before."Nabendu in trying to reconcile the story of his purchase with his visit to the Magistrate, uttered some incoherent words, which nobody could make sense of.
Nilratan spoke to the peons: "There has been no occasion for bakshish;you shan't have it."
Nabendu said, feeling very small: "Oh, they are poor men--what's the harm of giving them something?" And he took out a currency note.
Nilratan snatched it way from Nabendu's hand, remarking: "There are poorer men in the world--I will give it to them for you."Nabendu felt greatly distressed that he was not able to appease these ghostly retainers of the angry Siva. When the peons were leaving, with thunder in their eyes, he looked at them languishingly, as much as to say: "You know everything, gentlemen, it is not my fault."The Congress was to be held at Calcutta this year. Nilratan went down thither with his wife to attend the sittings. Nabendu accompanied them.
As soon as they arrived at Calcutta, the Congress party surrounded Nabendu, and their delight and enthusiasm knew no bounds. They cheered him, honoured him, and extolled him up to the skies. Everybody said that, unless leading men like Nabendu devoted themselves to the Cause, there was no hope for the country. Nabendu was disposed to agree with them, and emerged out of the chaos of mistake and confusion as a leader of the country. When he entered the Congress Pavilion on the first day, everybody stood up, and shouted " Hip, hip, hurrah," in a loud outlandish voice, hearing which our Motherland reddened with shame to the root of her ears.
In due time the Queen's birthday came, and Nabendu's name was not found in the list of Rai Bahadurs.
He received an invitation from Labanya for that evening. When he arrived there, Labanya with great pomp and ceremony presented him with a robe of honour, and with her own hand put a mark of red sandal paste on the middle of his forehead. Each of the other sisters threw round his neck a garland of flowers woven by herself. Decked in a pink Sari and dazzling jewels, his wife Arunlekha was waiting in a side room, her face lit up with smiles and blushes. Her sisters rushed to her, and, placing another garland in her hand, insisted that she also should come, and do her part in the ceremony, but she would not listen to it; and that principal garland, cherishing a desire for Nabendu's neck, waited patiently for the still secrecy of midnight.
The sisters said to Nabendu : "To-day we crown thee King. Such honour will not be done to any body else in Hindoostan."Whether Nabendu derived any consolation from this, he alone can tell;but we greatly doubt it. We believe, in fact, that he will become a Rai Bahadur before he has done, and the Englishman and the Pioneer will write heart-rending articles lamenting his demise at the proper time.
So, in the meanwhile, Three Cheers for Babu Purnendu Sekhar! Hip, hip, hurrah--Hip, hip, hurrah--Hip, hip, hurrah.
